Election 2012: Gays Have A Clear Choice

From Salon.com:

Here is one of those odd regularities that crop up in American politics: Every election year since at least 1996, about a quarter of gay voters (more precisely, of voters who acknowledge being gay in exit polls) have pulled for the Republican presidential candidate, rain or shine.

Perhaps this is because gay voters have not had a choice between rain and shine. Their choice has been between rain and drizzle. The Republican candidate preferred not to talk about gay issues (ugh! nasty!) and could be counted on, if the issue came up, to take the wrong side. The Democratic candidate, on the other hand, preferred not to talk about gay issues (eek! dangerous!) and could be counted on, if the issue came up, to chicken out and act like a Republican.

This is not to say that the candidates or parties were alike. In 1992, Bill Clinton made a point of including gays in his campaign, while George H.W. Bush outsourced social issues to Patrick Buchananites and the religious right. In 2004, George W. Bush favored a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage; John Kerry opposed it (while opposing marriage equality).

Still, the real-world difference was depressingly small. We gay folks had to watch while Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act and a ban on openly gay military service. We did get a few symbolic scraps. A gay person appointed to an ambassadorship! A meeting with the president! Yippee!

It will be quite interesting to see what the exit polls show this year, because 2012 is different. For the first time, no spectrum of dreary grays. The colors are black and white. At last, gay voters have a choice, not an echo.

President Obama started slow on gay rights. He opposed marriage equality, dragged his feet on the military-service ban, and let the Justice Department file a brief defending DOMA that could have been written by his predecessor. But then he made up for lost time. He went out on a limb jurisprudentially by abandoning his legal defense of DOMA. He and the Democratic Congress got the military ban repealed. He used executive authority to provide some benefits for same-sex partners of federal workers. Above all, he came out this year in support of gay marriage — and, in its platform, his party did the same.

~

Then there is Romney. Whatever his attitude in private, his public posture has been that of a throwback. He opposes gay marriage and civil unions and favors a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. That puts him where George W. Bush was in 2004 and, please note, several clicks to the right of Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee, who opposed the constitutional amendment (as did Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney). He says he hires without regard to sexual orientation but seems to oppose a federal non-discrimination law, much the same position that George W. Bush took in 2000. (He hired an openly gay foreign-policy spokesman, but the guy lasted less than two weeks.) He opposed repealing the military ban, although he says he would not revisit the decision. His running mate and his party’s platform promise to defend DOMA.